Who We Are

Gifford Bioscience is a discovery stage and preclinical CRO. We specialize in receptor pharmacology and receptor occupancy for neuroscience, oncology and metabolic diseases.

We help you understand target engagement, using physiologically relevant receptor systems, to support clearer development decisions.

Our assays include radioligand binding and uptake assays, receptor occupancy, autoradiography, SPR and functional GPCR assays. We show how your compounds engage their targets by quantifying receptor density, affinity, efficacy, and occupancy.

Our PhD level scientist work directly with your scientists, ensuring scientific integrity, clear communication, careful assay design and a full detailed report and debrief of project results.

” Great service. Speedy, reliable and very pleasant to interact with.”

Clinical Scientist, London University, Aug 25

“Hi Becky, I want to sincerely thank you and your team the thoughtful, professional way you’re handling everything. It’s truly uncommon to see such integrity and care from a commercial company, and I deeply appreciate it. Thanks again for your incredible support.”

Research Associate, Boston Charitable Foundation, Apr 25

“I’m very happy with the work GiffBio has done. Every study I have requested has been done quickly, at a reasonable cost, and both the resulting data and study reports have been high quality. Furthermore, everyone I have interacted with has been responsive and very professional. Regarding the survey, five stars on all questions.”

Associate Director, New Jersey Biotech, Dec 2024

100% PhDs

All of our scientists hold a PhD in pharmacology or a related discipline.

“5 stars across the board! Working with Gifford was a very rewarding experience – great science, great culture, great communication.”

SVP, East Coast Biotech, Dec 2024

“I forgot to say thank you for the work done on the binding assays, including the extra tests. The data looks great and I would like to stress, that it is highly appreciated that your reports are so thorough.”

Principal Investigator, Danish Pharma, July 2024

87% Recurring Customers

87% of our business is repeat business, working with the scientists we have collaborated with before.

“Thank you so much for the updates! These data are really important to guide our next step and thank you so much for delivering the results so quickly. We are very impressed with your work! Thank you again!”

Associate Professor, Californian University, May 2024

“The service I received during the course of my project was excellent. I am very happy with the outcome, and I trust the results and interpretation from your highly skilled team. I would absolutely utilize Gifford Bioscience again for future projects.”

Director Laboratory Ops, New Jersey Biotech, Apr 2024

International Customer Base

53% of our clients are in North America. A further third are based in the Europe.

Our location at the University of Birmingham’s Research Park enables close collaboration with the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham and the University’s Human Biomedical Resource Centre, providing access to diverse post-surgical human tissue. We also obtain human brain tissue through the UK Brain Bank Network, alongside model tissue, live cells, membranes and recombinant proteins.

Read about some of our recent
collaborations here.

The Management Team

Dr Andrew Gifford

Chairman and Chief Scientific Officer

Andrew was previously a Senior Scientist in the radiopharmaceutical development program at Brookhaven National Laboratory, New York. As a Principal Investigator, he has been responsible for the preclinical development of a variety of radiolabeled drugs. Techniques employed in his academic laboratories were primarily radiometric ligand binding and occupancy assays, radiolabeling chemistry and autoradiography.

Andrew is a graduate of Imperial College, London and was awarded his PhD in Pharmacology by the University of St. Andrews.

He is an author of 52 peer-reviewed publications.

Mr Macer Gifford

Managing Director

Macer is a banker by profession. His 25 year career in finance has spanned numerous senior roles. Most recently, he was Deputy Group CEO at Ahli United Bank. Macer was previously a Managing Director then Group Head at Standard Chartered PLC, where he assumed overall responsibility for the management of the Group’s balance sheet.

Macer is a graduate of the London School of Economics and a Sloan Fellow of the London Business School.

Dr Kevin Thompson

Non Executive Director

Kevin has a wealth of industry experience, encompassing both sides of the big pharma (Knoll Pharmaceutical) / CRO (BioFocus) relationship. In his 25 year career, Kevin has also worked for several biotechs: he joined Gifford Bioscience in 2019 from Chronos Therapeutics, where he was director of Screening and Operations. Kevin has a deep knowledge of in vitro screening applied to diverse therapeutic targets. He used his in-depth understanding of binding kinetics to develop our SPR (Biacore) assay services.

Kevin is a Biology graduate and was awarded his DPhil in Neurobiology, both at Sussex University.

He is an author of 31 peer-reviewed publications.

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